


That Face

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Bright Young Things, Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Doppelganger, M/M, Matchmaking, specifically- matchmaking for your own doppelgangers, watching your doubles smooch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 08:26:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18616882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Aziraphale just wants these particular humans to be happy. Crowley is about halfway on board, but he'd really like to know just what Aziraphale is playing at.He's certainly not JEALOUS or anything.





	That Face

**Author's Note:**

> This came entirely out of discord chat. It came up that pretty much all fic for Bright Young Things was crossover stuff with Good Omens, to which I said 'Oh, fun, because the actors', and then 'Oh, but none of it is about Ginger?', and then this happened. I rarely write Crowley and Aziraphale getting together pre-apocalypse, but this is one of the two exceptions, because... well.
> 
> I'm as happy with it as I think I'm going to get, so now I'm putting it up here, and reminding myself that it is FAR from the silliest or strangest crossover I've ever come up with/worked on.
> 
> Anyway, I am always ready to talk about my belief that Ginger jumped on marrying his childhood friend out of a desire for mutual security because he's gay and very closeted and here's a woman he trusts and cares about, and his protectiveness of her doesn't come from a romantic place just because he's running off a 'romantic rival'.

    Aziraphale stands, invisible, on a rooftop, looking down at the balconies across the way. They’re there, he can see the light on in the room. The two of them, some strange mirror to a life that never was… It had been Aziraphale’s little nudge that had changed Ginger Littlejohn’s mind, sent him to France instead of America, after that bad business. And he knows Crowley was involved… he can’t figure why exactly, but then, he can’t be surprised if Crowley has strange and complicated feelings about a man who nearly has his face.

 

    That’s why Aziraphale’s done what he’s done. Set them into each other’s paths like this, knowing what he’d known about them, about their secret hearts and what they needed. What they needed from someone else and what they needed to be _for_ someone else.

 

    At least Crowley, for all that he’d meddled in Ginger’s life for the worse, had taken to poor Miles. Just thinking about that feels like dangerous territory, thinking about the grim assurance in the way Crowley had boarded the train and said nothing would touch the boy on his watch.

 

    There was nothing either of them could do about the war. Aziraphale had watched Crowley tie himself in knots to justify doing the right thing, had watched the toll it took on him to be commended for purely human evil… But between the two of them, they’d helped some people. Certainly, they’d kept Miles alive, though his fortunes never did reverse to the high life he’d once had. They’d been up and down a bit, but he’d kept afloat. His friends had shipped his belongings to him, he’d had to sell most of them. He’d survived the war, but he’d wound up penniless, with a small suitcase that held everything he still held onto, and a hotel waiting to kick him out for failure to pay.

 

    And then Ginger had found him, and invited him to lunch, one expatriate to another, and from there dinner, and from there, to join him on a trip across the country. They’d smuggled Miles’ things out of his room and skipped on the bill, which Aziraphale couldn’t say he approved of, but…

 

    But now here they are. Ginger bursts out onto their balcony, Miles follows him. Human ears couldn’t overhear them, and prying eyes couldn’t see them clearly, but Aziraphale can. He sees and hears them as if he were right there with them.

 

    “I didn’t think-- the room was already booked, I didn’t know I’d have company… and they’re booked solid tonight but I can take the couch.”

 

    “You needn’t.”

 

    “I just don’t want you to think-- I don’t want you to feel _beholden_ to me. I didn’t invite you along to take advantage.”

 

    “Is that what you think it is?”

 

    “Me throwing my money around and then I bring you up here and there’s only one bed?”

 

    “Really.” Miles pouts, fighting a smile. “When a handsome man bails me out of a jam, takes me out to dinner, makes me laugh, and brings me back to a cushy room, I’d be a fool if I didn’t try for something.”

 

    “A handsome man? If I see any of those around, I’ll tell you, then.”

 

    “Oh, _really_.” He reaches up to cup his cheek. “You are, you know. Very handsome.”

 

    “I’m sure I’m not.”

 

    “You are. Don’t tell me you’re self-conscious about this, it’s just a little spot.” His thumb brushes over Ginger’s upper lip. “I mean, if you got a-- a coffee stain on the… on the Mona Lisa, would it be less of a masterpiece?”

 

    “Be a damn sight less valuable.”

 

    Miles laughs and leans up to kiss him, catching his lip between his teeth for a playful little tug. That’s how they’d look, him and Crowley. With the dark of night to soften the differences, that’s how they’d look, or near enough. If he were to bite at Crowley’s lip and draw him close, how they’d look. “Oh, good thing I don’t care about _that_ , then.”

 

    “I-- I’ve never… with another man.”

 

    “Oh.” His voice is soft. He takes Ginger by both hands, tugs him back towards the room, and Aziraphale thinks of Crowley’s hands, and how they would feel in his own. And what it would be like to lead him to bed… “Well, darling, I’ll be _gentle_.”

 

    They disappear. Aziraphale takes off. He doesn’t need to watch any more, it already hurts to have seen so much.

 

\---/-/---

 

    Aziraphale has never asked him, why he’s been so willing to do a bit of extra good for this one particular human, and he’s grateful for that. What could he say? The boy’s face lacks the comfortable timeworn wrinkles that Aziraphale has settled himself into. His eyes lack the spark of the divine. His body is certainly slimmer. And yet… there’s the same basic shape to him, more or less, something similar in his voice. He has the same lips. He flounces and prances and flaps and flutters with a flamboyance that is all Aziraphale, writ large. More youthful and more ribald, but the same fey mannerisms Aziraphale affects.

 

    In short, he’s a beautiful child, and Crowley cannot help but want to protect him, to keep him safe. To drop a few nice things in his path. Were Aziraphale human, Miles would look like his nephew, or perhaps if he’d had a wild enough youth, his son. As it is, Aziraphale has no real kin. Oh, sure, the Host is as close as perhaps it gets, but Crowley feels no loyalty to them just because Aziraphale is tied to them still. He feels some care for this human, who looks like him, or near enough. A fragile little thing he can protect because he loves…

 

    He loves, as the poet said, not wisely but too well. He loves the one being on Earth he should not love. Well, he’s not meant to love anyone, or anything, but above all else, his enemy, his angel, his adored.

 

    There’s nothing he can do about it. He can’t speak it, he can’t act on it, he can’t hope to have his love reciprocated. He can only look out for the boy for him.

 

    He’d terrified a policeman into a short stint in a mental institution, to get him safely free of England. He’d found ways of getting things to him just to keep him going, through the war, when Aziraphale had been elsewhere. He’d considered, in his weakest, darkest hours, that he might swoop in and play the sort of well-heeled and loose-moraled man who would trade a pretty gift for a flattering word and a little kiss.

 

    Not sex, no. That would be corrupting, not protecting. That would be a betrayal of the promise he’d made Aziraphale, about taking care of him. Anyway, he wouldn’t want it. Sex isn’t what he’s after, and if he was, it wouldn’t be with a pale imitation. Just to be told he’s charming and handsome and clever and too too kind, just to have lips as like Aziraphale’s as lips can be brush his cheek in thanks. To have him perched in his lap laughing agreeably over a glass of champagne and teasing him for the wicked, beastly thing he is. To have his face light up in delight when presented with the right bauble, a more theatrical version of the kind of looks Crowley has earned before, when he’s sought a return to Aziraphale’s good graces through the gift of a book, or perhaps a silver snuffbox.

 

    When he goes to check in on him again, to see if he’s in need of a little gift-- something that could be sold, if necessary, something Crowley could make sure came into his possession by chance-- he finds him all right. He finds him in bloody Monaco underneath Ginger bloody Littlejohn.

 

    _Littlejohn_. He’d left him a penniless wreck, hadn’t he? Crowley normally liked to keep the law from catching up with people, but for Littlejohn, he’d made an exception. Oh, he’d wanted him to lose everything. So many times, he’d resisted the urge to leave the primrose path of good for the wicked wiles set before him, so many times he’d been… disgustingly upright, for such a smarmy-seeming git. How… how _dare_ he? How dare he look so like a demon and yet act so morally so often? Even the times he’d caused harm, bless it, he’d thought it wouldn’t be so bad. It counted, sure, harm was harm, but it wasn’t _satisfying_. He liked a flutter now and then and he could be petty as anybody from time to time, but it was such work to push him to ruin.

 

    He’d left him on the verge of losing all his money and going to prison, locked up away from his wife and the child he’d been raising, and he’d been so sure that with Littlejohn in prison, she’d run to the tot’s biological father and leave the poor bugger to hang-- pardoning the expression. By the time he got out, with nothing to his name, his son would be calling another man ‘daddy’, would like have forgotten his face. He was supposed to be miserable, he was supposed to suffer, suffer because dammit, Crowley had to suffer. Because he had Crowley’s face, mostly, his face only young and so much more _human_ , and he wouldn’t ever know Hell the way Crowley knew Hell, he…

 

    He thought a bloody birthmark was bad, Crowley could never look a human being in the eyes and be seen as himself, and not…

 

    Because Crowley has to suffer, and to see him muddle through, to see him happy in spite of all his pain, it stings. It gnaws.

 

    He hadn’t even _considered_ that he could see him happy with Miles, and that’s the unkindest cut of all.

 

    From their balcony, the angle he has, he can’t tell if they’re undressed or only to the waist, if they’re intimately connected or merely in an embrace. What he can see is their profiles, profiles which might as well be his and Aziraphale’s, only younger, softer. How besotted they both are, nearly nose to nose.

 

    “We ought to write to our friends, Darling.” Miles says, one hand playing through Ginger’s hair. “Now we’ve got the place, we could invite them all to visit, do you think they’d come?”

 

    “Some of them might. Yours, at any rate. I’ve never been blessed with too many.”

 

    “Oh, well you can have some of mine, then. I shall positively _beg_ them all to come, how _beastly_ of me. ‘Come and see how happy I am, darlings! You simply must!’ Isn’t that the _worst_? I hate people who have to show off to you how happy they are! And you just want to go to a nice party to take your mind off your own misery, and here’s Miss So-and-So having the cheek to be genuinely _happy_. Well I am happy now, I’m thrilled to bits just to wake up in the mornings. And we’ve got this place and we’ve got room for guests-- some guests, at least.”

 

    Crowley’s stomach twists viciously as he watches Ginger’s head dip down, as he watches him press a kiss to that lovely boy’s collarbone. Rather more finely-carved than Aziraphale’s, true, but still it galls him. It looks as if he rolls his hips into him, though to what end it’s impossible to say. A bit of a tease however they might be positioned, beyond where he can see.

 

    “Good. I want you to be. You know I’d never let-- I’d never let anything happen to you now I’ve got you. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe. Safe and happy.”

 

    “Ginger… _Ginge_.” Miles drags him into a kiss, with a surprisingly serious pout. “I know. Do I make you happy?”

 

    “Of course you do.”

 

    “Happy enough?”

 

    “Yes, of course.”

 

    “You’re worried they won’t come.”

 

    “I’m not even thinking about it now, I’m thinking about _you_.” Another roll of his hips, and however they do come into contact below the covers, it draws a delighted gasp from Miles when he does, a dazzling grin.

 

    To see that grin on Aziraphale, with the added beauty of those deeper brackets about his mouth, his laugh lines… to be the cause of it, he’d Fall all over again, an actual Fall this time and not the rather less pointed journey he’d made. Let him be punished for something real, this time, let him be punished for all the things he desires of an angel.

 

    “They will.” Miles cups his face, and kisses him, so soft and gentle it hurts. “Mm-- oh, Darling, they will. It’s starting to be so lovely again with the war behind us, it’s starting to be. I mean it’s good enough! Makes for cheaper holiday-making, I suppose, when they put the rest of the place right, but… But they’ll come! And we’ll have such a fine time. We’ll stack everyone in the bedrooms and on the couches. _They’ll_ come, when I ask. I promise, I promise…”

 

    Ginger looks at him a long moment, in a kind of awe.

 

    Crowley could punish him for having this. He could ruin him again. Not even tempt him, just ruin him. Strike him down with something he’d never recover from. Curse him to wither and die in agony, even-- well, if he put through to the right department and did a couple favors. He could _destroy_ him for daring to be so hopeful and so happy.

 

    And if he did, if he hurt him, would he have to see a face so like Aziraphale’s cry?

 

    He takes off from the balcony. They never know he’d been there.

 

\---/-/---

 

    “Why did you do it?” Crowley hisses. It’s not what he and Aziraphale were meeting at the train station to discuss, and yet it tumbles out of him.

 

    A few feet away, a boy breaks into a run, shouting ‘daddy’, is scooped up into waiting arms. Laughter, tears…

 

    “Why did I do what?”

 

    “Arrange all this?” He nods towards Ginger Littlejohn, his reunion with his ex wife and the man who sold and bought her. His child. “Give him bloody everything?”

 

    “My dear, I didn’t arrange this at all.” Aziraphale shrugs.

 

    “No, no, of course not. Miles did.” He scowls. That’s what they’d been talking about, when he’d found them in bed together. Inviting people.

 

    They seem surprised to see Littlejohn, but Miles soon slips through the crowd to join them, to throw himself at the couple for hugs.

 

    “I didn’t know you knew Miles.” Nina says to Ginger, as Miles settles himself to take one of her arms and one of Adam’s.

 

    “We met in Paris, funnily enough.”

 

    “Paris!”

 

    “Terribly romantic, isn’t it?” Miles laughs.

 

    “Are you living there now?” Adam asks, still a bit stiff with him.

 

    “No, no, here. Living here.”

 

    “Oh, so you’ve had the shortest distance to go.”

 

    Miles laughs. “The very shortest distance there is, pet.”

 

    “Did, er… did Nina not _tell_ you?” Ginger coughs, adjusting his hold on the excited boy in his arms. “About the sort of arrangement we’d made, when we… shortly after we got engaged?”

 

    “I didn’t know I was meant to.” She says, looking between Ginger and Miles-- Miles, besotted, too bright and painful to look at that expression on a face that could nearly have been Aziraphale’s, all for a man who couldn’t really be Crowley.

 

    Their little group proceeds away from the train. Crowley and Aziraphale don’t follow, still sitting back to back on the benches, behind their newspapers.

 

    “You arranged Miles, though.” Crowley accuses.

 

    “For them to meet. They’re suited to each other. Everything else that’s happened is pure free will.”

 

    “Why?”

 

    “As I said, they’re suited to each othe--”

 

    “Bless it, angel, as much as you like to play at it, you’re not blind. Look at them. Look at Littlejohn. Why--” His voice cracks, and he coughs to try to cover it. “Why look out for that one?”

 

    “You’re asking me?”

 

    “He already gets so much. Just getting to be human. Just getting the chance they all get. And you go out of your way to play favorites with him, and…”

 

    “Well, he is one of my sort. You know I do for them.” Aziraphale squirms.

 

    “He has my face.”

 

    “Oh. That. Yes.”

 

    “Well?”

 

    “It’s terribly unfair you should make him suffer for that. It’s hardly his fault.” Aziraphale turns a page in his newspaper, though he hasn’t been able to focus on the words.

 

    “Life’s not fair.”

 

    Crowley rises, and leaves, but he’s not surprised when Aziraphale finds him on a rooftop later, looking down onto a happy little party in a back garden.

 

    “Crowley.”

 

    “Why should he get everything, while I get nothing? That’s all. Why should I have to see him get everything? A love, a child. Happiness in exile.”

 

    “Would you want that?”

 

    “Happiness in exile? Yeah.” He snorts. “I’m a demon. That’s about the biggest exile there is. Sure I’d like to be happy.”

 

    “Love.” Aziraphale whispers. “A-- a love.”

 

    “Doesn’t matter, does it?”

 

    “Because it’s not as though it’s easy for me. I mean… look at Miles.”

 

    Crowley is. He can’t help himself. It’s easier to look at Miles, down in the garden, unaware of his presence, than it is to look at Aziraphale beside him. Aziraphale, who’s cleverer than he likes to pretend, who sees him too well. Miles, cautiously attempting to connect to the boy, and he doesn’t dare look to see what Ginger’s face might be doing in turn.

 

    “I mean…” Aziraphale repeats. “He looks like me. He’s in exile, though he’s never done anything truly wrong. Only loved someone they say he oughtn’t... and I want him to be happy. And… and yet it is painful, also.”

 

    “Is it?” Crowley looks up at that.

 

    “I might wish to be loved, you know. The way he can be loved. The way I can’t-- I couldn’t-- But I might wish as much as anyone else, for a lover. For friends. For a family.”

 

    “You have the Host.”

 

    Aziraphale snorts. “Oh yes, the Host. I’m rather persona non grata, I’m afraid. I may not be kicked out, dear boy, but I’m not anyone’s best favorite up there. Anyhow, it’s not the same, is it? It isn’t the way… the way people have families.”

 

    “Is that what you want? A family, the way people have?”

 

    “I don’t really know. No. Or-- not… certainly not now. Maybe that’s not what I want at all, I don’t know.” He sighs, folding himself daintily to sit.

 

    Crowley sits down beside him, looking up at the clouds now rather than down into the garden. “I don’t know what I want, either. I want.”

 

    “So do I.” Aziraphale’s hand rest between them, on sun-warmed tile. “To love. To be loved. The way they do.”

 

    “Them they?”

 

    He smiles, wan. Shrugs. Crowley rests his hand beside Aziraphale’s, near enough to just about touch.

 

    “He looks like you.” Aziraphale’s voice is a whisper.

 

    “Yeah, I know, that’s the problem, isn’t it?”

 

    “You asked me why. Why I was kind to him, why I wanted to give him things. Why it should matter to me to see him happy. He has your face.”

 

    Crowley stares. Aziraphale doesn’t face him, only looks down to the garden, though seated, the edge of the roof hides the party from them.

 

    “Aziraphale…”

 

    “There is nothing I could do for your exile--”

 

    “I don’t need you to fix my exile. I don’t want--”

 

    “I know. I just mean… You’re my friend, Crowley. In spite of Heaven and Hell, in spite of myself… You are my friend. But there are things I can never do for you. I just thought… if I could…”

 

    “I suppose you think it’s petty of me to make him unhappy, then.”

 

    “No. Well-- yes.”

 

    “Aziraphale…” Crowley screws his courage to the sticking place. He takes Aziraphale’s hand in his, feels it warm and soft. “You could make me happy. I mean-- you do make me happy. When we’re together, I am.”

 

    “I know the ways the world is hard on you… and I know the things I cannot fix.”

 

    “It’s hard on us both. You know, I’ve been selfish…”

 

    “The way you’ve treated poor Mister Littlejohn for daring to be happy?”

 

    “No. I mean… with Miles. Our problems are too big to fix. Next to that, it’s so simple to give him a little thing and to watch his face. How it’s nearly your face. Because I wish I could… because I wish I could fix your problems so easily. Because you’re my friend, and I would make you happy.”

 

    “You could make me happy.” Aziraphale echoes him, squeezing his hand. “You do make me happy.”

 

    Aziraphale turns more fully towards him, Crowley does the same, the both of them leaning in. Aziraphale’s hand shifts in his, lacing their fingers together, his free hand slides up into Crowley’s hair, and that’s all the permission Crowley needs to cup one soft, round cheek in his own.

 

    “You could make me happy.” Crowley sighs. “Right here. Right now. Aziraphale…”

 

    “I know one thing I want.” Aziraphale admits. “I’ve always known one thing I want.”

 

    “A love?”

 

    “Your love.”

 

    They lean the rest of the way in. Aziraphale’s mouth opens to him, invites him. Crowley feels the temptation to pounce. To bite and suck and push him down against the roof, and he can absolutely see himself getting carried away and leading to the two of them rolling right off the roof and into the garden below. It would be quite a shock for the little party down there…

 

    “What do you say we get out of here?” He suggests.

 

    “I think they’ll be all right without us…” Aziraphale agrees.

 

    “I think they will.”


End file.
